"Ferrochrome" - ii.1 (Patreon)

So here we are at the first issue of Ferrochrome, the indie comic-within-a-comic that this graphic novel gets its placeholder name from. The original title of the graphic novel (named after this comic-within-a-comic) that I pitched was Fried Earth, but I was asked to change it since they had another [Adjective] Earth book in the pipeline and wanted to differentiate the two in their schedule. I then suggested we go with Ferrochrome, and my editor at the time thought it sold the entire book as "too science fiction" which would skew the perception of the potential audience come marketing time, and asked me to come up with a third title. But I did like Ferrochrome as the name of the in fiction comic, so it stuck.

And unfortunately for the readers, but mercifully for me, we start in the middle at the third issue of Ferrochrome. I have a bunch of notebooks full of notes and world building for this universe, but sadly I had to streamline most of it to avoid turning my slice of life erotica book into a super heavy science fiction work. Which, fair! It meant that I had to do a lot of dense SF whenever I could--hiding information in title pages, chapter titles, cover designs and lean dialog. Here I've put a placeholder for when I finish the book and need to circle back and add a detail I didn't get to convey elsewhere.

I get to foreshadow a bunch of stuff here in what looks like a simple cover.

And here we have the islands where most of the Ferrochrome plot takes place, and the protagonist of the series working away drawing some orchids on a log. It was actually kind of freeing to do science fiction as metaphor instead of making the plot about the science fiction, which is my usual mode. So hopefully this will have a different flavor than my usual work.